Truckers Seal Off Drunk Driver From Traffic

YPSILANTI, Mich. — Returning home from Ann Arbor, Dietrich Bergmann came upon three semitrucks that formed a rolling blockade on Interstate Highway 94. What, a protest?

The Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., man, who was with his kids, Liisa, 14, and Erich, 9, became irritated. He flashed his brights: Get out of my way.

But the blockade continued-two Zellerbach paper company trucks on either side of a Pepsi truck-and cars began accumulating behind. Although the drivers flashed their brights as well-infuriated, surely-the trucks just rolled on stubbornly, at times as slow as 40 m.p.h.

This began near Exit 185, near the Ypsilanti Ford plant, and went on and on. By Exit 190-Belleville Road-some drivers had begun skirting the trucks on the right shoulder.

Finally the Zellerbach truck on the left pulled to the center lane, and Bergmann's station wagon became the lead left-lane vehicle. He and his kids could not believe what they saw.

Ahead, a car swerved from the left lane, to the center, to the right and back. "That's a drunk driver," Bergmann told his kids and realized the trucks had been trying to protect him. He felt ashamed and grateful.

He watched as the car swerved into the median and went airborne over an authorized-vehicles-only turnaround, then continued in the median before returning to the pavement.

Almost 10 miles after the blockade began, the driver pulled off at Exit 194-Interstate Highway 275- and Bergmann drove on, indebted to the truckers. Liisa Bergmann got their license numbers.

Wayne Reynolds, 61, the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Zellerbach driver in the left lane, coordinated the blockade by CB radio with the Pepsi driver and John Leito, 42, of Portage, Mich., his Zellerbach colleague.

State police caught up with the driver on the I-275 shoulder, several miles south of 94. At least two motorists with cellular phones had reported him.